ARTIST | CHOREOGRAPHER | EDUCATOR
Makayla Church Rosenberger is a dance artist, choreographer, and educator who enjoys engaging in transdisciplinary and collaborative art making. She is trained in a variety of dance forms and has experience teaching students of all ages in public school, private studio, and community settings.
Makayla earned her Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Texas Woman's University in Denton, TX, where she worked as the Recruitment Coordinator and Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Division of Dance, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Teacher Education in the College of Professional Education. Additionally, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance Education from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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Makayla is well versed in both ballet and classical modern dance forms, as well as contemporary dance and dances of the African Diaspora. While in Charlotte, Makayla had the opportunity to perform in Suite Otis, a restaged Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater repertory piece by George Fasion. In 2024, Makayla completed the Alvin Ailey Horton Teacher Conference with Ana Marie Forsythe. While at Texas Woman's University, Makayla had the opportunity to study contact improvisation with Jordan Fuchs and contemporary dance with Dr. Charmian Wells, learning repertory from Forces of Nature Dance Company.
Her choreographic projects have been funded by various arts councils and have premiered in academic, professional, and self-produced settings. Examples of these opportunities include Escaping Drowning (2024) live sketching and dancing performed in the gallery exhibition of SPLASH! a multidisciplinary dance and drawing project presented at the Greater Denton Arts Council (GDAC), Texas Woman’s University's DanceMakers Concert (2023), Thursday Night at the PAAC (2024) of Denton, TX, and Looseleaves Showcase of Charlotte, NC (2019, 2021). For the Thursday Night at the PAAC event, Makayla presented a self produced show titled Movement Across Mediums. In this work, Makayla collaborated with a composer and dancer to create a multi-medium evening of performance work that included a series of acrylic pour paintings and original musical compositions.
As an educator Makayla holds a community-centered perspective. In the summer of 2022 she curated and facilitated the first Ashe Arts Contemporary Dance Festival, funded by the Jane Lonon Legacy Grant (NC). This included two weeks of free classes for dancers ranging from toddler to senior adult and culminated in a concert including local and visiting artists. In 2019, she created a new dance program at Hopewell High School (NC) and was a co-author in the K-12 Dance Curriculum Guide for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.